The Top Trending Stories of 2011 with Paul Scheer and Doug Benson

Starting at the #5 most socially shared story of 2011, we had the death of Osama Bin Laden. As it turned out, our panel acutally had some pretty funny stories about how they found out about the news. Scheer said he learned of the death while on stage with Sarah Silverman, who apparently schedules her tweets. “In the middle of like hundreds of tweets of Bin Laden death, she has, ‘My dog poops weird,’ he said.

As for our next top story, the Royal Wedding of Kate and William, both Scheer and Benson found the hype around the event to be baffling. Benson sarcastically joked, “I just watched the highlights on the news. They showed all the great fights that happened during the wedding.”

The #3 spot on our countdown was the disastrous tornadoes that swept through the Midwest this past spring. Aside from the lifesaving and relief efforts that were enabled by social media during the storms, our panel found it fascinating that people used Facebook and Twitter to recover lost items that were picked up by the tornado and dropped miles away.

One of the most globally impactful stories of the year was the Arab Spring revolutions and protests that brought major social and governmental changes in the Middle-East. Benson and Scheer agreed that these events really showed the spectrum of what you can use the internet for. “You can either start a revolution or make a fart joke,” Benson riffed off of Scheer.

The #1 most shared and discussed story of the year was the devastating earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster in Japan. For this Paul brought up a good point saying, “You don’t have to get your news filtered through a mainstream media outlet.” He continued to then quip, “It felt good for us as humanity that a Kardashian wasn’t listed in the top 5.”